Starbucks Raising Minimum Wage To $15 An Hour By Summer 2022

KEY POINTS

Starbucks will raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour in summer 2022
The coffee store chain said the decision was not affected by Buffalo, NY employees seeking to unionize
Costco, Amazon, and Target have also announced raising wages
Sen. Bernie Sanders sought to include a wage raise provision in the $1.9 trillion pandemic bill but it failed

Starbucks announced Wednesday that its minimum wage in the United States will be raised to $15 an hour come summer 2022, adding that the said amount could go as high as $23 for baristas, depending on the worker’s tenure and trends in the market.

In its announcement, the coffee chain company said that “Starbucks is prioritizing partners while also ensuring all partners earn at least $15/hour in Summer 2022.”

Starting late January 2022, Starbucks “partners with two or more years of service could receive up to a 5% raise and partners with five or more years could receive up to a 10% raise,” the company said. Finally, the company said that “average pay for all U.S. hourly partners will be nearly $17/hr” by summer 2022. The company will also revamp its training guide to add more training hours for workers.

Starbucks says it will raise its hourly pay for U.S. employees to at least $15 - and up to $23 - by next summer. The company says higher wages will help it attract new workers.The action also comes as employees in Buffalo, New York, try to form a union. https://t.co/pTgVntRu32
— The Associated Press (@AP) October 27, 2021

Starbucks’ latest announcement came as employees in some Buffalo, New York stores revealed plans of unionizing. In August, employees told the New York Times that operations problems such as absenteeism and understaffing increased with the pandemic. In response to the report, Starbucks said in a statement to the outlet that while it respects employee rights to “organize,” it also believes the workers “would not find it necessary given our pro-partner environment.”

The group of Starbucks employees seeking to unionize has already filed petitions with the National Labor Relations Board in hopes of securing union votes. If the group succeeds, they will establish the first union in nearly 9,000 locations across the U.S.

The Associated Press reported that union-related matters were not a driving force for its latest move on wages. Starbucks isn’t the only company raising wages.

None of the nearly 9,000 corporate-owned Starbucks locations in the country are unionized. https://t.co/xnncev46eq @nytimes
— Civil Eats (@CivilEats) October 20, 2021

This week, Costco raised worker wages to $17 per hour, with the raise taking effect Monday. The company previously increased hourly wages from $15 since 2019 to $16 in February. Amazon and Target have also announced raising wages to $15 an hour at a time when retailers and the U.S. labor market is faced with manpower shortage.

NEW: Eight Democratic senators today voted against Sen. Bernie Sanders' amendment to ignore a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian and add a $15 minimum wage provision to the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package.https://t.co/uEd1famnIv
— Axios (@axios) March 5, 2021

In March, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., saw his efforts of including a $15 minimum wage provision into the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 spending bill fail as Democrats joined Republicans in scratching his proposed amendment, CBS News reported. Among the senators who opposed the provision were Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H. and others.